Wattpad 101: Your guide to the world of Wattpad

How Do I Describe My Main Character?

Most new authors always struggle with a concept whenever they write their first chapter. That concept is 'how do I describe my main character?' So you have this person, and you want to introduce them to your reader. In your head, you know what they look like, who they are, and why we should care that they are about to go on some journey. However, you don't know how to properly introduce them to your reader.

This leads to the infamous mirror scene, where your character, for whatever reason, looks at a mirror, sees their own face, and then describes what they see. I cannot stress to you enough how immature this makes a writing sound. Every writing! For all my talk about how clichés aren't bad and how using them right can be good, I can't tell you I've ever read a single mirror scene that hasn't instantly given me the impression that the author lacked skill. I'm not sure it can be done well. I suppose there were cases where I didn't notice it all that much, and that's really the best you can hope for, to hide so most of your readers don't notice.

The thing is that you don't really NEED to introduce your main character. I don't really NEED to know what they look like. Let's put it this way. When you were born, how long do you think it took before you looked in a mirror and realized what you looked like? Do you think that knowing what you looked like contributed to your development as a human being? How about the experiences you received?

Unless a characters physical appearance is fundamental to the story (like a physical abnormality in the elephant man), is it honestly all that necessary to tell me what your main character looks like? The answer is probably not.

Most stories, especially on wattpad, have a certain degree of self-insertion. Especially stories in first person. The idea is that you are the main character. In that way, the less description of the protagonist, the easier it is to self-insert yourself into the story. You read twilight not because you want to read about some teenager getting vampire action, you read twilight because you want to pretend you ARE that teenager getting vampire action. Which is also why characters like Bella Swan are so nondescript and disinteresting.

Although, let's assume you're writing in third person, or that you genuinely want an interesting, dynamic character that pops. That character is going to unfold over the course of many chapters. As I learn more about their appearance, it'll be a gradual thing, a buildup of characterization in layers. That's what you should strive for... and anything else is just info-dumping. However, instead of infodumping lore your infodumping character descriptions.

Wattpad doesn't always make this easy. Most critics will only read 1 chapter, and many readers will only give one chapter a chance. Therefore, you might get criticism when they don't know what your MC looks like and that might bother you. I'd argue that if you're trying to get people to read your story, why you are wasting time describing a generic character? Shouldn't you be using your time setting up the story and making people want to read it, rather than setting up the characters who will be in the story?

It's far more likely people will start reading a story because the story is interesting, rather than because the characters are interesting. Now, interesting characters might be why they KEEP reading the story. Game of Thrones has certainly gone on for almost 3 million words because the characters are interesting, not necessarily because the story keeps moving forward. However, that doesn't help you on the first chapter.

Still, I understand. At some fundamental level, you have to present your main character. Here is a list of all the ways you can introduce your main character from WORST to BEST. Please note that the first couple are the ways you should RARELY use. We start with the bad ways to do it.

The Introduction:

"Hi, my name is Annabelle. I have green eyes and brown hair and I am 5'4'' with the cutest smile you ever did see. I enjoy competitive sports and..."